


Need

by raewise



Series: Softly [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Destroy Ending, Drabble, F/M, Physical Disability, post-ME3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 14:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2391773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raewise/pseuds/raewise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She loves him, but he knows she hates needing help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, Amrita Shepard is a colonist war hero, adept, paragon. Romanced Kaidan in ME1, no one in ME2, and Kaidan again in ME3. She's half Punjabi and half white.

She hated needing his help, he knew. For the longest time she’d been independent, mourning over the loss over her parents, but moving on by herself. He knew that she liked being alone, that she liked sitting and just listening. that was something Kaidan liked about her, that she could just sit and listen.

He wouldn’t call it meditating, exactly, more like quiet thinking. She could sit for hours, staring out into space. She usually was alone, but once in a while she allowed Kaidan to just sit next to her on the leather couch in the starboard and hold her hand.

Or, that’s how it used to be. Now he was constantly around her. He was her aid, her constant guide through life. Shepard had a hard time even walking most of the time, her legs burned so badly her muscles were deformed. Sometimes she would whimper in pain in her sleep. Her lungs were caked in black, still. Sometimes he rushed her to the hospital when she started coughing black. Sometimes she didn’t put up a fight.

Her hands, though, were the worst. They could both live with the legs and the face and the torso, but her hands were very dear to her. As a biotic, she never used guns much, but Kaidan knew the vulnerability she felt when she didn’t have one. He felt it himself a lot. When he slept, Kaidan often saw the heretical geth back on Virmire, heard Ashley’s voice, Shepard’s preference to him. Her fateful decision. When he had dreams like that, he wanted to destroy everything he saw, leaving only him and their small team. He hated being a soldier.

Her hands were so expressive, too. Even more-so than her eyes, which glittered and darkened and narrowed and wept. Her hands were like a second mouth to her. With a sharp flick of her wrist she could make the toughest opponent quake in his boots, with the gentle brush of the pad of her fingers she could make anybody bend to her will. She had magic hands, and a silver tongue. Paired together she was a persuasive genius.

Now, however, her hands were melted to the point it was painful to even unbend them, so they were always curled into loose fists. For the first couple weeks Kaidan had to do everything for her as the scabbing healed. when the scabs cracked open he would wrap them solemnly in bandages, and kiss each knuckle, which made her sad eyes shine. Now, she balanced her spoon between her fingers and her biotics, her eyes a constant shade of blue. Sometimes Kaidan forgot what colour they really were, she relied on her eezo-driven powers so much.

Her face, burned almost to unrecognizability, was a light shade of scarred pink, instead of the rich dark brown it was before the climax of the Reaper Wars. She had no eyebrows, and her eyelashes were just beginning to grow back, but the curve of her high cheekbones was the same, the hard line of her jaw was familiar, and her forehead, high and regal, was prominent on her face. He thought maybe she felt guilty for the way she now looked, like maybe he was staying because he had to, rather than because he wanted to. Thoughts like this made him upset because she should be more concerned for herself; she was the one who was really being affected by this. She was a confident woman on the outside, but Kaidan knew she was afraid he only loved her because of her reputation. even before, she hadn’t really believed she beautiful, yet she basked in compliments. Something she didn’t understand, however, was that he didn’t really give a shit whether she was physically attractive or not. He just wanted to be around her. To keep the company of a person with a presence so big, that was… the _greatest_ honour he’d ever been given.

Life was different, but he knew she loved him from she way she buried her face into the space between his shoulderblades, how she cried openly in front of him when she failed to do something herself, how her eyes were always warm when she looked at him.

Being with her, however hard things may be right now, was enough for him.


End file.
